Inspection systems identify and classify defects on semiconductor wafers to generate a defect population on a wafer. A given semiconductor wafer may include hundreds of chips, each chip containing thousands of components of interest, and each component of interest may have millions of instances on a given layer of a chip. As a result, inspection systems may generate vast numbers of data points (e.g. hundreds of billions of data points for some systems) on a given wafer. Further, the demand for ever-shrinking devices leads to increased demands on inspection systems. The demands include the need for increased resolution and capacity without sacrificing inspection speed or sensitivity.
Additionally, many semiconductor devices have dimensions smaller than the resolution of an inspection system, which causes images generated by the inspection system to appear blurry. In extreme cases, images generated by the inspection system may not closely resemble the actual pattern of features on the wafer. As a result, the signal to noise ratio of defect signals may suffer and may negatively impact performance. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for curing shortcomings such as those identified above.